A COUNTRY WHERE GOING TO AMERICA
IS AN INDUSTRY
BY ARTHUR II. WARNER
W HILE on a visit to Piana dei
Greci, an Albanian settlement
on the mountains 12 miles out
of Palermo, I asked what the leading in
dustries of the place were.
"Agriculture and emigration to Amer
ica," was the reply.
The answer would be equally true of
all that part of Italy which lies south and
east of the city of Naples, including
Sicily. It is this region-whose people
are the most untutored and whose land
is the least developed in the kingdom
that for almost a score of years has been
pouring its lifeblood into the United,
States, until it has given us a population
of some 2,000,000 Italians, and brought: it
about that at least every eighth man,
woman, or child in the city of New York
is of that race.
In my effort to see the Italian emi
grant as he is at home, I went first to
Sicily, partly because of the magnitude
of the exodus from that island within
recent years-
10,477 annually from
1905 to 1908-and partly because, of all
his race, the Sicilian has as yet the fewest
friends in America. There was a time
in the United States when it was custom
ary to condemn Italian immigrants en
masse. Later it became the fashion to
assert that, while the northern Italians
might be desirable, those from the south
were otherwise. Still more recently it
has come to be said that some southern
Italians might be all right, but the Sicil
ians are a dangerous and lawless set, re
sponsible for the "Black Hand" outrages
and other crimes- among their people.
One of the first localities I visited
while making my headquarters at Pa
lermo was Termini, a seaport 25 miles to
the eastward, with a reputation for mak
ing the finest macaroni in Italy. I had
heard it spoken of as an "American
town" and, inquiring the reason, it was
explained, that the leaven of emigration
had worked so powerfully there that half
the population was in America and the
rest was likely to go before long.
"You will see many women there," I
was told.
"You will find them keeping
the shops and doing the work which
there are no longer any men to do."
And so it proved.
The population of Termini, I was in
formed by residents, was about 25,000,
by comparison with a number nearly
twice as great when the emigration move
ment set in 15 years ago.
"But it has helped the town," they
continued.
"There are fewer people
here now than once, but more money.
Capital that has been earned in America
has been invested here and the city was
never more prosperous.
- Some 200,000
francs a month come back from towns
men in the United States and the prin
cipal bank here holds 8,ooo,ooo francs
against the names of emigrants who are
at work in America."
Come with me through this island of
Sicily somewhat and see if its people are
the degenerate and undesirable sort that
they are frequently pictured. From Pa
lermo, on the north coast, situated in a
wonderful valley of lemons and oranges
known as the Conca d'Oro (shell of
gold), we will go south through the inte
rior to the blue rim of the African Sea
where stand the golden brown temples,
which the Greeks reared at Girgenti
2,500 years ago, and then back into the
sulphur country and eastward to Mount
AEtna.
The lemons and oranges which are
so great a part of Sicily's wealth we lose
soon after leaving the coast, for they
must have water, and it is not to be found
in this treeless interior. In their stead
are groves of olives and almonds and
fields of barley and beans, which last